I've had my Macbook Pro for 6 years now. It's an older Core Duo 2.16 model and it's been completely fine with no problems! Today I still do my graphics design work on it with a max 2GB RAM. LOL.
I'm about to pull the trigger and get the new quad core 15" but I'm trying to figure out if buying the base 2.0 or the higher end 2.2 would be better with the significant video card/GPU upgrade would be better using Illustrator/Photoshop/Lightroom. I mean if it takes a photo a couple more seconds to make a filter happen then I don't mind that. As long as the computer doesn't appear to be struggling and redrawing the screen in blocks of data.
The only things changed in my old Macbook Pro is a Seagate 320GB G-Shock protected harddrive and a new battery 5 years ago which still works close to 100% today. I take the battery out when not using it while leaving it with a charge in between 40% to 80%. I use battery power approximately once a week. The OS has been solid coming from a hardcore Windows background. It's been a year and a bit and my Mac side still boots up in about 40 seconds and shuts down within 10 seconds. My Windows 7 "bootcamped" side has degraded heavily to numbers far greater than Mac OS speed.
Another thing worth mentioning is a laptop stand. The one shown above looks very clean but stops you from using the dual monitor side which is extremely important once you get used to having double the real estate on screen resolution. Here is my setup at home which I love!!
